Cycle of Life

Nishera the Garden Keeper wore a night elf’s form, though no kaldorei I’d ever met carried that kind of stillness. Green dragon. Guardian. And now, reluctant executioner of her own charges.

“Ysera sleeps in the Emerald Dream, watching over both the Dream and Azeroth,” she said. “But a horrible nightmare has taken hold in the Dream, and now I fear that Ysera is being affected by it. Recently, I asked her to aid in the fight against the Scourge that are raising frost wyrms at the other dragonshrines. She misunderstood. Instead, she told our dragonshrine’s defenders to treat those not of the green dragonflight as enemies.”

An Aspect, lost in nightmare? Her own guardians had turned hostile through a simple miscommunication.

“I need you to slay some of the skytalons. The shrine must regain its balance.”

The emerald skytalons drifted above the shrine with regal grace. Now they saw only enemies, and when I entered their territory, they descended with talons outstretched.

My people have long ties to the green dragons. We shared the Dream’s edges, walked the boundary between waking and sleep. Killing their kin felt like betraying something sacred. But Nishera was right… the shrine’s balance demanded it.

Emerald blood spilled across moss that had never known violence before this nightmare began. Each one fell with terrible grace, bodies crumpling among flowers.

“Do not regret the part that you played in the cycle of life,” she said. “Birth, death, and rebirth are all part of the natural order.”

The balance would not come back while Alystros ruled the sky above it, which means facing the thing directly and returning with The Plume of Alystros as proof the predator is gone.